Inside the Mind Of… Camilita Nuttall

Camilita Nuttall is an award winning corporate sales and business growth specialist, business mentor, entrepreneur and investor. She has keynoted in some two dozen countries.

Nuttall launched two successful businesses in network marketing, and sold millions of dollars in global coffee sales with Organo.

Mentioned in Forbes, BBC News, and quoted in Think & Grow Rich for Women, Nuttall works with publicly traded companies, SME’s and individuals to help them focus on their business needs.

As founder of Event of Champions, Nuttall brings together the best speakers in the business industry to deliver quality content that promotes success. In coming weeks she will be speaking in Toronto (Sept. 28-30), London, UK (Oct. 20 – 22), as well as Las Vegas, Dubai, Malaysia, Trinidad, and several other countries.

What differentiates a great manager, from a good manager?

The biggest difference between a good manager and a great manager, I believe, is that unlike a good manager, a great manager not only manages others, but also manages him or herself too.

Great managers allow their staff to lead, make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. They lead from the front, not afraid to do the work they are asking their staff to do, and not allowing their ego to get in the way.

A good manager asks their team to do it; a great manager does the task with their staff, and also allows the team to put in suggestions and comments based on client’s requests, as the staff are usually closer to the customer than the manager. I do this with my own team.

What do you find are common entrepreneur mistakes?

A common mistake is thinking they need to work all the hours God sends in order to make it work, and not realizing that they have a business to fit their lifestyle, not the other way around.

I run three separate businesses. My time is precious and so is my health. I make time to work out, rest, and not overwork myself. Some entrepreneurs find it hard to look after themselves first, as they are the driving factor behind their business.

One last common mistake is that entrepreneurs feel since they have an amazing brand, product or service, customers will come to them. No they will not. You have to constantly go after your target audience, follow up correctly, and learn how to have customers sell you.

This I teach through my 7 Steps to 7 Figure Sales Training Program for corporate companies and entrepreneurs.

What are one or two key pieces of advice you’d give an entrepreneur?

Never stop learning. Constantly find ways to sharpen the axe, form possible collaborations and joint ventures to create bigger and better business relationships.

The second for me is never quit! We all know the statistics that eighty per cent of businesses fail in their first year and up to half never make it past five years. Shocking, but true. Most businesses fail because of lack of cash flow, ingenuity, collaborations and changing customer needs. My answer to businesses: change, innovate, collaborate, launch out into different countries, give something first if you want to get something back and hire a business mentor like myself who can look at your business, and give you a strategic business growth plan.

What’s the secret to good time management?

I don’t believe in time management, I believe in choice management. Everybody has the ability to choose what the most productive way to spend their working time is. In my business growth trainings, I teach only doing income generating work in your business, rather than just being busy.

My secret is having each day broken down in 30-minute time slots that are structured on income generating activities alone. Everything is put into my diary. I have one diary for everything, and if it’s not in my diary, I don’t deal with it during my working day. I treat everything in three different ways:

Is it Urgent?

Is it Important?

Can it Wait?

This way I can deal with the things that are pressing, or most income generating, and leave the other things for another day, or get someone else to deal with it.

If a business could only start with one social media channel – LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram – which would you suggest? And why?

It all depends on the business, and where your customers hang out. You can’t just pull one out of a hat; you have to do your research as to where your customers are.

As a speaker, coach and trainer my ideal customers are usually on LinkedIn, because they can afford my fees, and are the kind of clients I am looking for. I often use Facebook, Twitter and Instagram too for my events.

If you are a traditional brick and mortar business then LinkedIn or a Facebook business page may be the thing for you, but do your own due diligence.

What traits should an employer value most about their employees?

Their ability to take calculated risks and have an opinion. I encourage my employees to have an opinion, and bring their ideas to the table too, as they deal with my clients face to face more than I do.

Employers should also value their employees’ up-to-date knowledge and know-how with technology, especially if those employees are millennials. The way in which GenX’ers think or process information is quite different to that of millennials.

One last thing: employers should value most their employees’ ability to work unsupervised and anywhere. I often travel a lot for my speaking and I have to trust my staff to work unsupervised, but checking in on them daily. The reason as an entrepreneur we have a business is so that we can have freedom, both financial and time wise. Your staff’s ability to work unsupervised is one trait employers definitely must value.

Dave Gordon

Dave Gordon is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in more than a hundred publications globally, over the course of twenty years. More about him can be found at DaveGordonWrites.com